


Ghost of a Whisper

by Stardust_and_Blades



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Keith (Voltron), Human Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, ghost whisperer lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2019-10-06 00:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stardust_and_Blades/pseuds/Stardust_and_Blades
Summary: Lance just graduated from college and is on the move for a career, excited for an adventure in a new city and a new home. However when his apartment inhabits a ghost who remembers nothing of his past life, he makes it his duty to help him retrieve his memories and move on from the living.He just never expected to fall in love along the way.





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS OF SILENCE I HAVE REAPPEARED. 
> 
> Welcome readers of ANSS, I hope you're in for a brand new journey. To new readers, I hope you enjoy the ride you're in store for, cause its a doozy. I've wanted to write a ghost fic for awhile, and the first chapter is finally here!  
> I'm going to try and keep updates weekly, but at the latest once a month since school is slowly coming back.
> 
> Happy reading!

Red and blue light muddles in his vision. There is screaming in the distance, unsure if they were human or part of the white and red vehicle with a cross plastered on its sides. 

Everything hurt from his torso to the soles of his feet, his head barely being covered by the plastic and padding of the helmet. He felt liquid course down his cheek. He knows it’s blood without looking. It is a miracle the helmet itself didn’t pop off and cause him more damage, for he couldn’t recall if he fastened the strap under his chin when he left in a hurry.

One moment he was on his motorcycle, the next he was colliding with the front of a truck, its wheels squealing in protest as the driver tried to keep his conscience clean. 

There were voices. More screaming. But they weren’t as loud as they should be.

He could hardly hear. His arms were growing numb. His legs cold. His vision flickers between a colored scenery of tall buildings and blaring cars to a calm, unending darkness. 

As the agony coursing through his body began to dull down, so did his senses.

What was his name again?

Where was he going?

Why was he in such a hurry?

The questions swirl for a couple of moments before he gave into the darkness, collapsing in its arms and his mind shutting down.

What was the point?

He is dead anyway.

\--------------------------------------

 

“Yeah, yeah, I got the bedspread you sent me, mama. No, I’m not starving, Hunk bought me food awhile ago. Yes I--no that’s okay. Yes, love you too mama.”

The young boy clicks the end call button as he kicks the aging door open, a small box in one arm and keys in the other. He had the phone up against his ear between his shoulder blade and cheek before his fretting mother hung up, making sure he made it to the city in one piece. He is the last child to leave the nest, Lance already graduated from college with flying colors and moved thousands of miles away for work. It was emotional for both of them, so he can’t blame her for constantly calling and checking on him. Now it’s just her and his dad, save for his young cousins visiting every other weekend.

He flings his keys and phone on the wooden table near the small kitchenette. It is a one bedroom apartment, completely furnished from the last owner three years ago and the tenant, who saw the expensive furniture, chose to leave it there for the next one who took up the space. Lance had raised an eyebrow at the “gift”, wondering what could have prompted the tenant to not simply sell the stuff. He would have made quite the bills if he sold it or pawned it off. When Lance asked, the tenant avoided his eyes and kept his attention on the paperwork, making sure Lance signed the contract binding him to the place for at least a year. 

Well, it is no skin off his bones. He is in debt from school and can’t afford any fancy couches or bedding, so in the end it works out. 

Despite his laxed thinking, there is something nagging at him about it. Maybe he can ask the tenant again when he isn’t so focused on getting contracts signed.

Lance walks over to the kitchen with the box he had, settling it on the counter and unloading the supplies. It was quite heavy, holding plates, pans, and silverware. God bless his mother for sacrificing some kitchenware, or he would be buying plastic utensils and paper plates in bulk on the next Target over. 

The sound of porcelain clanking against wood permeate the air, Lance humming “Mr. Brightside” to himself as he does so. He bops his head, letting the music control his steps as he dance in what he can now call his very own home. 

That is, until he turns away from the plates to put away the pans and he hears a loud crash.

Shattered pieces of porcelain scatter all over the tile floor, Lance’s brows distorting into a frown. That’s weird, he knows he set them perfectly fine in the cupboard. And he closed the cupboard door. 

His eyes narrow, looking right and left as he bent down and retrieved the broken pieces with a brush and dustpan. He throws them away in the trash near the sink, and when he turns back to the kitchen he practically jumps out of his skin.

The cabinets and drawers were pulled out, the silverware and pots and pans blinking in the fluorescent lighting as if they were a welcoming sight and not a potential threat to Lance’s fragile life.

“What the fuck,” he mutters, shutting all the drawers and doors in haste. Did Pidge follow him to his apartment? Are they lurking in the vents somehow, finding perfect moments to mess with Lance while he isn’t looking? Is this revenge for eating her double chocolate chip cookie?

Either way, he is not up for these shenanigans.

“Pidge, if you’re here, I will pay you back. I swear.” He calls out, shoving the last of the drawers. He knew he shouldn’t have eaten that cookie. They said they would make him regret it oh but what does Lance do? Forget. 

He continues to decorate his new apartment and put things away, keeping an eye out for any green t-shirts in the background or the sound of a computer in the distance. When he hung up some posters in his room and walked out, he walked in to find the tape had ripped off the wall. When he set a bottle of lotion on the tabletop of the bathroom, the next time he returned it was in the trash. As he turned on his computer to put on some background music while he ran around the living area, it would randomly pause without Lance so much as touching it. Sometimes half the chosen song would go on until the halfway mark. But upon hearing artists like Nikki Minaj or Ariana Grande, it immediately stopped after the first verse. 

By the time he finished, he had to fix several displaced items and reattach the poster to his walls. Lance isn’t one to be bugged easily, but when the same thing continued to happen over and over again, his patience can ride thin. And he is close to reaching that limit. 

The moment he made his bed and left to watch his favorite show in the living room and returned forty-five minutes later to the blankets and pillows thrown on the floor, he had enough.

Deciding what to do, he remakes the bed and returns to the living room, placing on a show he had no particular interest in watching. As it aired, he went into the kitchen, grabbed a spatula, and ran to his bedroom so Pidge would have no time to hide amidst ruining his beautiful handiwork on his bed. He waits beside the entrance of his room, waiting for the sound of bedsheets being stripped from his mattress and the dull thud of a pillow hitting carpet.

“I caught ya!” He yells in triumph as he bursts through the doorway, brandishing the spatula as if it were a weapon. However, the perpetrator wasn’t Pidge. In fact, it was someone he least expected to be invading his new home. 

His dark hair draped down his neck, a red jacket with black lining the sleeves, its material seeming to be leather. He wore a black t-shirt underneath and jeans, the only sign of wear and tear being the gaping hole and stretched out threads on his knee. His hands were concealed with leather gloves, tightly holding the sheets mid pull. His eyes, an unexpected purple sheen, widen at Lance. They sparked with surprise, his dark eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline. He did not say anything, he just stood there staring back at Lance as if he were a ghost.

Oh, might Lance mention he was also transparent?

Lance screams, throwing his spatula at the figure and looking around for anything else he can use as a weapon. It did not completely register in his brain what exactly this stranger was, all he knew is he had to act, and act fast. 

He continued to holler, claiming he will contact the police if the intruder does not leave in a five second window. The man stays put, dumbfounded by not Lance’s reaction, but by the sheer fact he can  _ see _ him. Lance is aware there has been several tenants before him and that all have left after three, four months, breaking their contracts but not caring about the cost. Lance didn’t ask questions, oh no, he was more concerned about finding a viable living place in a short time span where rent was skyrocketing every single day. Okay, not every day, but just a one bedroom apartment was going for a grand a month, and this particular apartment was going for a measly $200. With internet.

“Get out get out get out!” Lance screams, throwing a book and hiding behind the corner. It went through the intruder, the man blinking and looking down at where the book landed. He lets go of the bedspread, focusing on Lance with an intense, narrowed gaze. His violet eyes, bright with skepticism, opens his mouth. But all that came out was a small “uh,” before Lance pops his head back into the room, displaying his hand with a phone in it and hovering over the call button to 911. 

“You thinking I’m playing, but I’m NOT--wait,” Lance stops, squinting at the man. After a good few seconds, his eyes widen and he drops his phone, it finally settling on him what he is dealing with.

“You’re...a ghost.”

“Ah, so you’ve noticed.” The man replies, his voice deep and unamused. Lance facepalms.

“God, of course. Of fucking course, as if I could escape you guys by moving. Mama warned me, but did I listen? Nope!”

“Um--” The ghost begins, but is interrupted by Lance again. He is pinching the bridge of his nose, radiating irritation.

“Listen, buddy,” He says, settling the ghost with a withering look. “I understand you may not be aware you’re dead, but you are, and you need to go into the light. Just go into it. Yeet yourself into that blinding yellow orb. Because obviously you have nothing better to do lingering than recounting the moment you tragically died.”

“Well--”

“Yes yes I know--’I have a message for my only living family who is still mourning!’ “ Lance imitates, pitching his voice higher than the ghost’s tone. He approaches the transparent figure, puffing out his chest and putting his hands at his hips as a mode of establishing dominance. He has heard it all before, all his life. Lance doesn’t have time to deal with another lost soul for a long period of time. Not in his new home. He has no interest having a roommate who isn’t able to pay rent and cry in the middle of the night over their lost years, never to return to the land of the living. 

It isn’t that Lance doesn’t feel for them, because he does. He has since he was a child, always bringing home ghost children to his mother and vehemently pushing for her to help him find their mother or father. It did not quite process his mother couldn’t see them like him, all his five year old mind could comprehend that the children were sad and yearned for the comfort of their parent. His mother always taught him and his siblings to help others; to lend a hand to the unable; to wear your heart on your sleeve and never feel bad for being in tune with emotions and empathy. And at times, though his mother couldn’t see them, she would calmly talk to Lance and the unseen child how their parents could not come right now, but that they will meet them if they go into the light. Whenever the dead child would exclaim they don’t want to go alone, Lance’s mother would just smile, and ask if they saw anyone they recognize in the rift between the living and the dead. Some would say yes, and his mother would say how said being is waiting for them and will provide company until their parents arrive. Others, mostly those from broken homes, would be skeptic and claim they had no family. They had nowhere to go, confused and scared of why they can’t remember what happened or how they ended up in Lance’s area. 

Those were always the hard ones. The children with no parents to call parents, no memory of love and care, but anger and fear of the world. Though they were young, they had scars that went deeper than time. It broke Lance’s mother’s heart. She and a small, worried Lance would mule over the child’s words, not sure what to do. 

She would allow a “sleepover”, explaining they must keep quiet and instruct her other children to play along with Lance and his “friend”. And once the night ends with giggles and squeals, she would explain to the child the next morning that they could have these sleepover all the time up in the sky. It wouldn’t be with Lance, but that there are many children, much like them, waiting to befriend someone like the child. When the time came, Lance would play with them again, but that it was time to go home. To find those friends to have permanent sleepovers with.

It would take little or more pushing, but in the end a tearful child Lance would wave goodbye to their friend, the ghost child smiling as they disappeared in a flurry of golden orbs and blue crystals. 

Lance learned about death early. And life. Yet his mama, always calming a sobbing Lance and stated he would see them again in the future. 

_ “Like abuela Sanchez?” Lance would ask, voice wobbly and snot dripping down his lips. _

_ “Like abuela Sanchez,” his mother said as she wiped his tears away. “No one is ever truly gone, mijo.” _

As Lance grew, he learned about his Sight. How his mother’s mother had it, and that it skips generations. Sometimes every other generation there would be a child with the Sight, like Lance. Other times, it would take several generations until a child is born with permanent Sight, it only becoming apparent when they reach ten. If they still see spirits from then on to the teenage years, there is no getting rid of centuries worth of spiritual inheritance. 

As large as his heart is, as much as he has helped countless of spirits move on (and almost got possessed once oops), he is cranky, hangry, and drop dead tired. He had to get to the point, or this ghost just might cost him every fiber of his patience. The amount he currently has is on empty, and he just wants to sleep and not worry about ghost boy possibly taking over his body or banging pots and pans at 3 a.m. Yes, he may be cute despite the evident mullet he is sporting for all of eternity (is he from the 80s?), but that is not enough to make him go through the rounds of moving a ghost on.

Jennifer Love Hewitt made it seem easier than it actually it. Being a ghost whisperer is not all emotional, yet short farewells and heartwarming reunions between family members and the deceased.

If he is able, he would much rather steer clear of interacting with the deceased family. He has learned the hard way how those interactions end up. Not all roses and sunshine. That is what he got for listening to a television series that got cancelled after five seasons.

“Regardless of your situation, staying behind is boring and doesn’t benefit anyone in the end.” Lance continues, blue eyes staring at indigo, the most pigmented trait of the spirit. “So look straight at the light that has been in your line of vision for decades and walk to it. You’re welcome.” Lance turns to switch on his favorite television show when the spirit flickers in front of him, arms crossed and a disapproving glint in his eyes. If Lance wasn’t used to spirits doing that on a daily basis he probably would have yelped,

“A light? What are you talking about?” He questions, his first words low and soft.

“You know. The light. The bright orb you see somewhere.” Lance waves his hands around, as if he could conjure said light with the flick of his wrist.

“There isn’t one.”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, there isn’t. “

Lance crosses his arms, skeptical. “You’re just saying that so you can make demands because I’m the first ghost whisperer you encountered. Trust me when I tell you it is right in front of your eyes. You just need to concentrate.”

Lance moves to the side of the ghost to continue what he was doing, but is intersected again. This time the ghost’s furrowed brows morphing into ones of confusion, the shadows swirling in his dark orbs lightening to a human opaqueness. 

“And I’m serious when I say I don’t see one.” He pushes. “I’ve been dead for three years and have never seen a light.”

“You--three years?” Lance exclaims, shock seizing his body. That can’t be right. The way he is dressed, the mullet he is sporting, the lack of being connected with current society, he could not have been dead for such a short amount of time. And 99% of the time ghosts can see a light of some sort, unless they were angry, vengeful spirits or poltergeists, who have condemned themselves to live in limbo for all eternity out of hate for the living humans. They refused to move on, and when the light flickered away and they permanently became stuck inbetween life and death, they made it their goal to ruin so many lives--some managing to kill if the person or family is too resistant on taking a damn hint.

“That can’t be true, every ghost I’ve encountered could see some semblance of it.”

“Well, I haven’t.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

The ghost fixes him with a glare that could rival Pidge’s stink eye. “Pretty sure roaming the same apartment for 3 years ensured I searched every nook and cranny.”

Okay, this guy isn’t a poltergeist, but he sure as hell has an attitude. 

Lance sighs and places a hand on his hip. “I don’t know what to tell you. You are the first ghost I know who isn’t able to see a light. There have been stubborn ghosts, but they have always been able to describe a semblance of a glimmer over their shoulder or at the corner of their eye. Unless you’re a demon.”

“I’m not a demon.”

“Could have fooled me,” Lance comments, earning himself a growl from the spirit. “You are quite aggressive.”

“You’d be annoyed too when a stranger moves into your apartment and keeps telling you to go into a light you can’t even see.”

“Hey, I earned this apartment fair and square!” Lance counters, his chest swelling up at the abrasive reply. “Apartments don’t just stay vacant because a dead guy couldn’t get the balls to leave the living behind.”

“You think I haven’t tried?” He says, waving his arms around. “I don’t even remember how I died, let alone who exactly I am.”

That caught Lance’s attention. While rare, most ghosts knew who they were. They would sometimes forget how they died, but keep the memories of their families and life before the death. In circumstances such as this, the ghost could have died a brutal, painful death, giving them temporary amnesia and hence confusing them when they are told they are dead. Murder is the common case in terms of forgetting how they died, but it always took a trip to their grave, family, or online to jog their memory. Other times it is a tragic, freak accident, the amnesia caused due to mental shock. It would be a little harder, but as soon as they gave information that could lead to newspaper articles and any other online evidence, the ghost always retrieved their lost memories. 

Could this ghost be one of them?

Lance debated if he wanted to venture into another game of clue with the spirit, weighing the pros and cons of keeping the unneeded roommate or delving into the depths of international or local news meant to keep him up until the wee hours of the morning. He had responsibilities to adhere; a job to find in short notice before his savings from his previous job during college runs out. The apartment may be cheap, but that doesn’t mean he is free to lag about in job hunting. He is on his own, no parents to save him from financial predicaments, and no friends in close distance for him to crash at. 

But he doesn’t want to ignore the guy’s problem. No one deserves to be left behind, confused and lost as to who they were and their overall past. He is the only one able to see the young ghost, Lance’s contacts in other ghost whisperers nonexistent, since he only told a couple of close friends about his ability. Going around announcing you can see ghosts can land you as untrustworthy by the skeptic community, or be bombarded with believers on a daily basis. He had wanted neither. Just telling his close friends was hard, even if one of them was a lovable, kind fellow whose Hogwarts house is hufflepuff. 

The ghost may give an aura of defensiveness and hostility, but if Lance looks closer, if he digs through the icy glare and tense stance, he can see a ghost wanting out. Wishing he wasn’t trapped and didn’t spend his evenings screaming at people to see him. To help him.

How could Lance turn his back on a soul wanting nothing but knowledge and rest?

His mom did not raise a fool.

Letting out a breath, Lance waves the ghost to his laptop on the coffee table, patting the spot next to him for the spirit to sit. 

He did with no objection, raising an eyebrow at Lance. 

“Okay, so you said you don’t know who you are,” Lance begins, pulling up google. “Do you know your full name? Lost spirits usually do.”

“Uh...” The spirit puts a gloved hand to his chin, rifling through his muddled, patchy memories. Lance waited patiently, the seconds turning to minutes as his fingers hovered over the keyboard. 

“K--Keith? Yeah, my name is Keith.”

“Got a last name?” 

He blinks. Again, the minutes go by, and by the sixth minute the ghost had his head in his hands. “No, I don’t remember. A ‘K’ keeps popping up, but nothing.”

“Hmm...” Lance types the name out, the cursor blinking at him after the second K, nothing popping up besides spelling corrections and “ _ Did you mean Keith Urban _ ?”. 

A last name would be very helpful right now. There are a million Keith’s on earth, and Lance doesn’t have time to click on 70,000 pages worth of google searches. 

Deciding to take another route, Lance opens another tab and types out his facebook profile, typing the ghost’s name and awaiting the results.

Sure enough, his search comes to a quick halt, for there are several Keith’s with the letter K as their last name, others having a full last name but never fitting the appearance of the man before him. There were several Keiths part of frat houses, some decked out in long, blonde California locks with the sea as their background. Obviously not him, unless he was hiding elaborate tattoos and a mole at the corner of his lip, to which he is free from as far as Lance is concerned. There was one Keith with no last name and no pictures of themselves, which sounded very in character for his ghostly invader. That is, until he scrolled a bit more and found several...politically offensive posts that made Lance want to kill him all over again.

“I got a question,” Lance says, pulling up another tab.

“Shoot.” Keith replies, staring up at the ceiling. He is probably trying to recover his memories again, though something tells Lance after 3 years of trying this time isn’t any different.

He circles the screen to face Keith, a picture of Donald Trump popped up in google images.

“How do you feel about this man?”

His gaze slides down to the screen, Keith’s lips forming into a grimace. 

“Seen him on the news with the few tenants that came in before I spooked them. Hate the guy, would choose to be an amnesiac than hear him speak. Why?”

“Oh, no reason.” Lance says coolly, grateful he wasn’t helping a racist asshole who wants to watch as the world (and its government) slowly burn to ash. He wouldn’t have left the guy in limbo forever, Lance would have just ignored his requests until he was black and blue in the face with apologies and swears to donate money in his will to charity.

Mama didn’t raise a fool, nor a Trump supporter.

Keith is fast to catch on, however.

“Did you seriously ask that question to see if I’m worth helping?” Keith sounded on the verge of being offended, yet proud.

Lance shrugs, clicking off the two tabs. “Hey, I have to know who I am helping. It’s not like you’re a cute ghost girl or an innocent animal waiting for their owner.”

Keith rolls his eyes, crossing his arms and leaning against the couch. “Whatever. So I’m guessing you found nothing.”

“Not yet. To be honest, I’ve only worked with ghosts who remember a lot more than you do. You sure you don’t remember anything? Anyone?” Lance places emphasis on the last word, knowing well ghosts not remembering their loved ones is slim. Demons don’t have loved ones, and poltergeists’ memories become so lost in anger and vengeance, they cannot fathom having family, let alone caring. 

Again, Keith shook his head, light purple dimming into a darker, far away look.

“Nothing. When I woke up, there was nothing left in this apartment. Besides the furniture.”

Another strange factor. When people die, they have described immediately waking up as a spirit upon death, but for Keith for some weird reason, didn’t wake up until time had already passed.

“Wait, so you woke up to an empty apartment? But when you die you instantly turn into a spirit. How could you have lost a chunk of time?”

“I don’t know, I just did.” Keith says, eyes downcast to his hands as he fiddles with the cuffs of his leather jacket. “When I woke up, I was on the ground of my emptied room--the one you’re in. I know this is where I lived. I don’t know how, but I feel this kind of...memory? Something digging around in my head saying this isn’t some random location.”

“A common occurrence. Ghosts are drawn back to the place or area they either died in or felt comfortable. Think this is where you died?”

“Honestly? I have no idea.” His brows furrowed in thought. “When I push for my memories on how I died, there is just...red and blue lights. A lot of red and blue. I can never distinguish them without blacking out.”

“Blacking out?”

“Yeah. What, did your ghosts never phase in and out?”

Lance folds his arms and taps a finger against his mouth, analyzing Keith’s situation. Ghosts can, in simple terms, black out. If they use their spirit abilities too much, they expel a far too large amount of energy. If they want to be seen, it costs the amount of energy powering up a house for a week. Since they exhume enough power to burn out a light bulb for a five to ten second appearance, they can  “black out” (stop existing temporarily) for a certain amount of time. It depends on how powerful the spirit is. Vengeful, homicidal spirits are powered not just energy, but emotions, making them all the more threatening. Meak ghosts, like children or the elderly, could flicker for two seconds before evaporating for two weeks. It is what makes psychics and ghost whisperers so useful--they don’t have to enter a ghost coma to be heard or seen.

“No, ghosts do that. And it’s no surprise you black out so fast.” Lance explains. “Spirits have a...hierarchy when it comes to doing tasks. How long did you say you focus on recovering your memories?”

“Uh...I think it was an hour in the beginning. As I continued to do it, it takes 3 hours to completely knock me out.”

Lance’s eye bulged out of his sockets. 3 hours? Vengeful spirits are able to use their energy at max an hour, and that is with intervals between appearances and possible assaults on the humans within their presence. Demons have an unlimited quantity, but it’s obvious Keith isn’t a demon. Lance would be dead if he was.

“That’s...wow are you sure you’re dead?” Lance pokes at Keith’s stomach and shoulder, the ghost not able to feel his finger go through him but nonetheless, swipes at him as if he were a fly circling his head.

“No, I have a body walking around without a soul,” keith says, sarcasm dripping in his tone. “Of course I’m dead.”

“I dunno, evil spirits can’t do what do you.” Lance scoots closer to Keith, bright blue eyes searching Keith’s face as the boy edges away, not pleased with the skepticism in his obvious dead self.

“As you can see, I’m not like most spirits.” Keith goes to push him away, but his hand passes right through Lance’s shoulder. He sighs and slumps. “Guess I used too much energy trying to scare you away.”

Lance laughs, amused at his efforts to terrify a ghost whisperer who has looked at shredded, bloodied corpses and red dramatically written on the walls of abandoned houses. 

“Sorry to disappoint, but it’s going to have to take more than knocking stuff over to scare me away. Besides, I have a one year contract with this place. Hate to go back on my word.”

“I’m not good with roommates.” Keith deadpans, not looking forward to sharing his living space with a stranger. Lance is nice, but Keith has a short fuse, and his gut is screaming he isn’t good with people. Maybe the reason he can’t recall anything is because he never had a family? 

“Duly  noted,” Lance says, reaching towards his laptop and flipping it shut. “But until we figure out your past, you’re stuck with me for the time being.”

“Is there a second option?”

“Hey! I’m an excellent roommate, I hope you know.” Lance straightens, puffing up his chest and attempting to seem in charge. “My friend Hunk enjoyed my presence.”

“What is a Hunk?”

“Hunk is a human being, and a wonderful friend who makes pastries you can die for.”

Keith stares at him, Lance realizing what he said and backtrack.

“I mean, if you weren’t dead and stuff. You’d like him, he is really sweet.”

Keith hums, attempting to move the remote over the edge of the coffee table, losing interest in Lance’s slip of tongue. Lance eyes him, debating if Keith was really a human in his life or if he was secretly a shapeshifting cat. He kind of acts like a cat--grumpy, knocks stuff over, and tries to scare the daylights out of Lance at any possible moment. In any other situation Lance probably would have seen it as cute. Right now, however, he is more concerned over how in God’s name he is going to crossover this ghost without him knowing the basics of himself. What kind of ghost can’t even remember their family? He could be an orphan, but he is bound to have friends, at least. Everyone has friends. Everyone--and that includes his geeky, antisocial but fun friend Pidge. They love computers more than people, yet manage to befriend him and Hunk in college. 

Lance watches Keith try to move the remote a little longer before he swipes it up, giving Keith a disapproval look.

“Okay buddy. Since we will be reluctant roommates, there has to be rules and boundaries.” He points the remote at the ghostly male as if it were a teacher’s stick. “Rule number one: don’t mess with my stuff. I like having my pots and pans in one place.”

“Or you can just get another room.” Keith bluntly suggests, not giving in to the idea of being joined by a living human. He may be unable to remember his past life, but he is aware his personality is not up for dealing with this guy.

“Ugh,” Lance gripes, facepalming. “I already told you. I made a contract. I can’t go back on it unless I want to lose all my savings. Fun fact, you did a number on this particular room because the contract made it practically impossible to get out of.”

“It’s not my fault I’m stuck here.”

“That doesn’t give you the right to scare the shit out of the staff and rentees!”

“I’m a ghost. We don’t like people who impose on our property.”

“It’s not even yours! It’s a bloody apartment!” Lance argues, gesturing with his hands in big motions. If ghosts weren’t busy mourning their deaths, they were definitely making life hell for those innocently searching for a place to live. 

“It was in my n--” Keith stops, his eyes going wide as a lightbulb goes off in his head. “It was in my name.”

Lance waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

“Yeah, and?” Lance pushes.

Keith jumps up from the couch, a renewed vigor brightening is overly brooding shadow. “The apartment was in my name. Maybe you can find out more about me if you ask the landlord.”

“You’re right, they should keep files of all their clients, as well as copies of their contracts.” Lance breaks out in a smile, excitement flooding his veins as he realizes there is a lead. It isn’t the route he usually takes, but it’s no different from searching the web. He will charm his way into the heart of his landlord and hope he gets the information straight away. If there was a death at the apartments, if someone died a horrible death and causes concern from believers, they are obligated to tell any information regarding the history of the living area. 

“Think you can manage? Some landlords are closed lip when it comes to past clients.” Keith says. It’s true, some landlords would rather go against the law than lose a dollar. Lance is no stranger to said people.

His grin widens, pride gleaming in his eyes. “You can bet your sweet ass I can. I am a pro at wooing my way into the hearts of people.”

Keith lifts an eyebrow, skeptic.

“You are sure?” His eyes trailed up and down Lance’s body, taking in his stance; the cockiness he displayed as a means of self assurance. Lance would be insulted if he hadn’t received such looks before. Mostly from Pidge whenever Lance had a crazy idea in mind while Hunk was his conscience telling him no.

“Of course, this isn’t my first rodeo with a lost spirit.” Lance takes out his phone and glances at the time, stuffing it back in his pocket and seizing his laptop. “I’ll go first thing tomorrow morning. It’s past five and the office is already closed.”

“I’ll go with you.” Keith offers. “Not like I’m stuck to this apartment.”

“You could have went sightseeing all over the world. Yet you stayed here.” 

“Hard to enjoy being dead when you don’t know why you’re dead or if anyone is mourning you.”

“Wow, way to kill the happy mood.” Lance teases, heading towards his room. He has job applications to fill. No use sitting around twiddling his thumbs for morning. Keith’s predicament is important, but for now it will be on hold so Lance can squeeze in a means of earning money.

“You get the couch. If you need anything, call for me.” 

“Um...” Keith begins, stopping Lance in his tracks so he can quizzically look at Keith, expecting a question or a demand for him to sneak into the office rather than wait.

“Yeah?”

“You never told me your name.”

Oh, right. He never introduced himself.

Lance fully turns his body towards him, sporting his signature grin--toothy and genuinely kind.

“The name’s Lance.”

\----------------

[Come yell at me on tumblr!](https://stardust-and-blades.tumblr.com/)


	2. Tolerance and Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance tries to bond with Keith, but also really wants him to move on. They plan to find out more information from the landlord, but they stumble upon a shocking discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M BACK WITH ANOTHER CHAPTER  
> Sorry it took so long y'all, work has had me by the throat at 5am (pity my tired self pITY ME)
> 
> Anyway this is a pretty basic chapter. Mysteries take time so bare with me and enjoy the angst being put on hold for a little bit. :3

Having a ghostly roommate isn’t the worst, but it isn’t the best either to Lance. While his conscience would not be free from guilt if he were to ignore Keith and tell him to find another ghost whisperer or medium, he does not take pleasure in being the sole provider of the apartment. As well as setting boundaries, to which Keith is very unaccustomed to.

Keith has been alone for three years up until now; going through walls whenever he pleased, talking to himself as he jumbles through his head yet again and nearly lands himself into a ghost coma. Within 24 hours Lance has seen Keith more on the rigid stressed side rather than the chill ghost floating about until the landlord’s office was open the next morning. Once spirits are told their message will be relayed or are told their demise will be figured out, they breathe and don’t throw stuff around nearly as much. Yet Lance, for the short time he has known the spirit sporting an 80s mullet, he’d rather have him knock something down like a cat than sit on the ground, hands interlocked with each other and his chin settling on them, staring hard at the carpet. He just sat there. Thinking and thinking until Lance took note of the signs of fatigue and flickering of his figure to guess he was reaching his limit. Lance would have to yell out Keith’s name, knocking him out of his revery and making his spirit a little more opaque rather than the sheer surface he had moments before.

Keith would blink a couple of times, not expecting someone else to be in the room. Lance

is pretty sure he forgot Lance even existed. That his new “living” roommate can not only see him, but talk to him. It is understandable--if Lance were Keith, he wouldn’t be use to the change in a short amount of time either. But still, would it be that bad to relax until morning? Lance is glad he isn’t screaming in his ear and demanding for his request to be completed immediately, as if they were to die all over again if it wasn’t done ASAP. But the silence, the knowledge there is someone under the same roof of Lance who isn’t a close friend, the fact the spirit is so  _ quiet _ and resolute does not leave him in an easy state of mind.

So as night came to shadow the sky and Lance took a break from his job hunting for making dinner, he calls out to the spirit once again.

“Hey, so until you recover your memories and we do some digging,” Lance says, poking his head in the fridge to see what he could make. “You should really take it easy.”

Keith, who is now floating above the couch staring at the ceiling, hums in response, not listening.

“Hey, mullet.”

No response.

“Keith.”

Nope, nada.

What was he supposed to do, start screaming?

Becoming irritated, Lance snatched a pudding cup from the side door and chucked it at the spirit, not caring it will not impact. 

“Hey dumbass! You listening or what?”

The pudding flew past Keith’s head and went right through his stomach, plopping in the middle of the couch. 

Keith, finally breaking his concentration on his memories, veers his head towards Lance with a scowl.

“What was that for?”

“Dude, you’re going to put yourself into another ghost coma,” Lance chastise like a mother hen. “I don’t need you disappearing on me, especially when the time comes we figure out who you are.”

“Not like I have anything better to do.”

“Uh, yes, you do.”

He raises his eyebrows, unconvinced. “And what’s that?”

With a shit eating grin, Lance digs into his pants pocket and takes out a box of cards. “We are going to play uno.”

“Play...uno.”

“Yep,” He plops himself on the floor and pats the place in front of him for Keith to sit. “I’m making pasta and it will take some time before the water boils, so I don’t see why not. Plus, with your strangely high ghost abilities it will not be a problem for you to move the cards.”

Keith twists his mouth, settling on the spot Lance motioned to but kept his eyes on the box of cards. “I...vaguely remember how to play. It rings a bell.”

“Great! We will do a warm up round to help. Though I must warn you, I am an uno master.”

\---

 

“You can’t do this. I helped you. I gave you a home. I offered you solace!”

“Yup.”

“This goes against being human. Don’t you have a heart? A soul?”

“Lance I’m literally a ghost.”

Lance pulls at his hair. “Technicalities! You can’t do this, please Keith!”

Keith places his card down, inflicting immediate defeat on Lance’s cards. “Uno.”

Lance threw his hands in the air, chucking the pile of cards in front of him and scattering them, petals of loss twist and turn until they settled. “BETRAYAL! TREASON! FASCISM!”

“I’m 99% sure this isn’t a fascist game, but one of chance.” Keith corrects, a smile tugging at his lips.

Lance points an accusatory finger. “Don’t you dare smile, you traitor. After all I have done! After I allowed you to live in my good christian household!”

“This was my apartment before you came along.”

“Yet here I am, paying rent.”

“For once I can say I’m glad I’m dead.”

Lance is ready to go Jamie Lee Curtis on Keith’s ass, facial expressions and all. He hasn’t been this defeated since the time he challenged Pidge to a game of overwatch and lost all 24 times. He blamed it on him using an xbox rather than a playstation, but really Pidge is better at technology than him and could wipe the floor with his novice play. Hunk it was an even half, both of them at the same level of expertise, though Pidge has been teaching Hunk new techniques, therefore leaving Lance biting the dust. Out of all people--of all things--he is beaten by a ghost. A GHOST. How does that even happen?

“So not fair.” He grumbles, jutting his bottom lip out in a pout. “Stupid ghost powers.”

“I don’t have powers. I’m just an entity.”

“Nah, you were probably psychic in your last life.” Lance comments. “How else would you beat me?”

“Um, because I’m good?”

“Uh uh. Nope, didn’t happen.”

Keith rolls his eyes, gathering the cards together in a heap once more. “It was your idea to play in the first place.”

“Well yeah, you were brooding enough to give me a migraine. I had to offer something.”

Keith shook his head. “Again, why do you care? So I go into a ghost coma. It may help in our search. I have to find something.”

Lance, frowning at Keith’s lack of care for himself, folds his arms. Ghosts are persistent, but this one is on a whole other level. “Keith, we will figure it out together. You need to have faith in me. As long as there is documentation on your existence, we have a whole slew of resources we can rifle through. Give it time.”

“I have given it time,” Keith argues, cards dropping through his hands, his concentration broken. “For three years. Three years I have been stuck here. Every second, every moment dedicated to figuring out how to move on. I just...” Keith hesitates, biting his lip and squeezing his eyes shut. “I just want to know where home is.” He whispers.

“And we will,” Lance says, sympathetic to his situation, all too familiar in this reaction. “I promise you, we will. But nothing is going to come from it by hurting yourself.”

Lance wishes he could provide more than that. To tell Keith that the next day they will find his name and his memories will instantly flood him, a sea of innocent childhood adventures and fond, doting faces spirling about, birds returning to the nest they have left behind. Lance wants to say he would move on tomorrow, that a simple google search will solve all his problems and release the shackles chaining him to earth. 

But Lance couldn’t, because that would be a lie. In some cases they would be easy enough to solve, able to send them off from one to five hours. But others took months--once, a year to figure out what they needed done to move on. It doesn’t help that Keith could have been such a regular human being, there would be no information on him to the public. Besides a facebook lookup, there aren’t a variety of options. Lance hopes that, whatever caused his demise, there is some semblance of an article or mention of the incident. It’s obvious it isn’t old age. Possibly an illness, but said idea would mean breaking into hospital records.

Breaking into hospitals, despite popular belief, is not as easy as seen in the movies. 

“It doesn’t really hurt,” Keith says. “It’s more like I’m falling asleep. I generally don’t sleep except for when I use an abundance of energy. Though I do feel tired from time to time.”

“Ghosts don’t feel tired.”

“Well, I do.”

“That’s...new...” Lance wracks his brain. Suddenly they went from point B to Q, and Lance doesn’t know how they ended up there. “Are you sure you’re not a demon?”

Keith opens his arms up, as if to put himself on display. Okay, fair enough.

“Sorry, sorry. I just never ran into this before. Your case is...weird.”

“Trust me when I say I hate it as much as you. Oh, and by the way,” Keith starts, his body angling to look behind Lance. “I think your pasta is being overcooked.”

“W-what!?” Lance turns around and sure enough there is the pot, bubbling over the pot and smoke leaking from the crevices. He shrieks, hoping the alarm doesn’t go off and he causes a fire alarm. They were so immersed in the uno game Lance completely forgot about the little timer he had going in his head.

He gathers his pan holders and shoved the pot away from the burning oven, flicking the blue flames off. He opens the lid and sighs in discontent, the noodles morphed into mesh. So much for having homemade fettuccine alfredo. 

“Pizza it is, then.”

“Or you could go to the store and grab more.”

“But I’m hungryyyyyy,” Lance whines, his stomach growling as if to prove his claim.

“You’ll be waiting twenty extra minutes.”

Lance quirks an eyebrow. “So you remember the time it takes for pizza to arrive, but not your birth?”

“I--it’s basic knowledge!” Keith says in defense.

Lance raises his hands in mock defense. “Cool it, hothead. I’m just yanking your chain.” Lance chuckles to himself at Keith’s expression, taking his silence as a sign for him being free from the conversation. He walks towards his room, Keith narrowing his eyes as his body disappears to the left where his closet is. There is a rustle and bang, Lance swearing before he reimmerges with a few board games. 

“Think you have enough ghost energy for monopoly?”

 

\-----

 

By daylight, Lance has slept far too late in the day for comfort. Originally planning to arrive at the office in the first hour of opening, his alarm neglected to go off. He had stayed up late with Keith playing games, the two goading each other and laughing, Lance only able to eat two slices of the delivered pizza due to him being too wrapped up in the game. He thought Keith would be a nightmare to deal with, but considering their situation and Keith’s first time having someone interact with him in three years, he didn’t complain. 

Keith couldn’t give him information on his human life, but judging from his clean-cut analyzing and small outbursts of emotion when Lance poked fun at him, he was intelligent and definitely hot tempered. Not dangerously so, the lights flickering a little when he taps into his stronger reactions, but not enough to shatter bulbs and break the kitchen chairs’ legs. Lance has already ruled out him being a poltergeist, yet one can’t be too careful.

When Lance got on the topic of his family--the boy going into detail on how his ability skipped his mother and stayed with him well past the normal age of seeing spirits--Keith’s unnaturally dark, violet eyes softened to a molten amethyst. His features were not nearly as sharp, and he listened attentively. Lance knew in those moments he is just a lost spirit wishing to recall what Lance can burst from his memories at any moment. 

He wants to remember his family. Tell Lance about them, if he felt the desire to confide in the ghost whisperer. Lance talked and talked the other night, but Keith couldn’t utter so much as a tiny fact about himself or the people he knew. 

It makes Lance’s drive from reluctant seer to...voluntary aid. Hits a part of his chest in a way that is hollowed out; a punch in the gut. A sense of helplessness when he opens his mouth to speak, wishing for it to be good news on their search rather than dry, withered potential.

So as he rose from his slumber and glanced at the clock on his phone, it is no surprise he screams at the time reading 4:50 pm. He is loud enough to invoke Keith, who floats past the door and stumbles upon a Lance struggling to get his head through his t-shirt.

“Why the hell didn’t you wake me?!” Lance cries, shoving a frantic foot in worn sneakers. He has never slept this late. Never. Not since he pulled an all-nighter with Hunk for their finals and they were slammed with sleep deprivation after an exam.

“I was asleep! Your screaming woke me.”

“It’s almost five! Aren’t you supposed to wake up at dawn or something? Scare the living with pots and pans? Scream like you’re being tortured? SHIT! Where are my keys?”

Keith gave him an incredulous look. “Why would I do that? And why are you panicking?”

As if to answer his question, Lance shoved his phone at Keith, displaying the time. He doesn’t seem to process the meaning, for he throws his hands out for Lance to explain. 

He groans and finally finds his keys buried in the pants of yesterday’s jeans, running to the door and flinging it open.

“The office, remember McFly? The office closes at five!”

He narrows his eyes in thought, the realization smacking him square in the face. “The...OH!”

“YEAH.”

“Shit shit shit,” his ghostly form dashes down the stairs. “What are you waiting for? Lets go!”

“You forgot too, you dimwit!” Lance retaliates as he stumbled down the stairs. Unlike Keith, he cannot gracefully glide down without somehow tripping and landing on his nose.

“I was asleep.”

“Ghosts don’t sleep.”

“I’ve told you, I do!” Keith argues. “I used up a lot of my energy last night playing games with you. I needed to recharge. I don’t understand how you do not believe me when you see it for yourself.”

“Mmm...I wouldn’t say I have seen it...” Lance says, throwing his hands out as he shrugs. “Unless you’re into that stuff.”

Keith’s eye twitches from Lance’s teasing tone. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Are you sure? Not only do you have horrendous hair style choices, but you could have some secret kinks I don’t know about--”

A harsh blow of wind rips through the air, causing Lance to stumble midstep. Keith glares down at him, irises flaring with heat; a fire filled with burnt cities and ash. Wanting to test his tolerance, Lance opens his mouth to continue only to be stopped by another blow of cold air.

“Oh?” Lance says, smug. “Did I hit a nerve?”

Keith just stares down at him. “Keep it up and not only will we not make it to the office, but I won’t help you find information. Then you will be stuck with me for a longer period of time.”

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“I don’t care. I’ve been in the dark for three years, what’s another three more?”

Oh God. Three years with this guy. Three years with a grumpy spirit with no way of leaving without his memories. Lance is sure he isn’t a bad guy, but three years with mullet attached to his hip? Eavesdropping on possible dates, scaring his family, and not paying rent? Hell no. They have known each other for a short time but Lance can sense he is not lying, very much aware of how determined ghosts can be. There is a reason vengeful spirits are feared, and it’s all because they cannot let go of the past. Who knows what Lance could invoke by saying or doing the wrong thing to lead to Keith’s righteous fury. Those eyes certainly do not scream “harmless bluff”. He has nothing to lose and so much to gain, while the opposite rings true for Lance. 

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Lance states, rushing his steps as he glances at his watch. “No jokes on your kinks.”

“Good.” 

“Can I ask one thing, though?” Lance asks, hand on the doorknob and his head tilt towards Keith.

He looks at Lance, seeing nothing suspicious behind those blue eyes. “I guess.”

Lance’s voice comes out hush; a caress in the night.

“Be real with me, you aren’t a furry, are you?”

Lance does not stay for an answer, for he rushes in and slams the door in Keith’s face, knowing well what to come if he were to remain.

Keith wishes to be alive, only so he could smack some sense into the fool he has been thrust into.

\-----

 

It is 4:59 when Lance barges into the office. He stands before the landlord, the feeling of being one of THOSE customers settle in quick succession over his conscience. He isn’t one to step into a store ten minutes before closing, let alone an hour unless there are extreme emergencies--for instance, his sisters needing pads and unable to move from their beds without crying out in pain. Or vomiting.

And yes, he could wait until the next day, but he wants to have his apartment all to himself. Desires to walk around without the sense of being watched. Of knowing there is another being in the space, bringing forth the same sensation he had while living at home. He adores his family. Would die for them. Would kill for them.

But he needs privacy. Keith is a direct contradiction to that ideal. All he needs is a full name and maybe some background on how he died, then they can google away and whisk him to whatever lies beyond afterlife’s veil. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, pure unadulterated darkness, it doesn’t matter. If he wanted a roommate, he would have posted an ad on Facebook. As long as he can sing in the shower and dance around the house in his underwear without judgement, he will be one happy guy. 

So there he is, tripping into the office and his eyes settling on a bewildered housing tennant. 

“Mr, McClain!” He exclaims, dark eyebrows shooting up. “What brings you to the office so late?”

No doubt he was about to walk out and flip that “closed” sign since he is a few inches away from Lance. 

“Heeyyy Mr, Bryant,” Lance starts, plastering on a easy-going smile and settling himself on one of the chairs in front of the man’s desk. “Sorry for the late visit, but I have a few questions to ask on the apartment. I meant to come earlier, but I was distracted from a very grumpy cat who wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Keith, who has float past the door and is hovering above the desk, flips him the bird.

“Ah, I see.” He says in understanding. “It has been only a day since you moved in. I was wondering why you didn’t ask any important questions, like plumbing or on the neighbors. However, I do have a dinner to attend with my wife and her associates, so I am sorry to say this may have to wait until tomorrow.”

“I promise this will only take a couple of minutes. Scout’s honor!”

“Mmm...I really must be going...”

“I’ll only ask two questions! The rest can be for later, but I would love to get this out of the way. It has been bugging me since last night.”

“I don’t know...You’re cutting it awfully close. I’ll be back in the office in the morning--”

“Plus,” Adds Lance, a slight sweat breaking out. He doesn’t want to use the tactic he has in mind, but since the landlord is being more difficult than expected, he whips out his trump card. “One of my friends told me an interesting rumor surrounding the apartment you gave me. Something about a man who died there three years ago? Last time we talked, you were quite casual in the history of the apartment before the three years.”

There is a switch in his demeanor. A shadow looming over his brows, the shine in his eyes gone and his body rigid. His warm brown irises froze over, a semblance of Hell playing with the edges of his pupils. Lance saw him as a friendly person; a reasonable man willing to stay true to his word and is not up to his ears in greed. But as soon as Lance pushes the subject of a previous owner he neglected to inform Lance about, the bright gleam fades away into black. Even Keith, who has no memories, is surprised at the change. He glances to Lance, eyebrows raised in a silent question mark. 

Technically, the play of his card is logical. Smart. Unexpected. 

Doesn’t mean he isn’t scared shitless. Eviction isn’t his goal here, and if he ends up kicked out he will definitely make Keith never hear the end of it. 

If he doesn’t end up buried in the landlord’s backyard, that is.

“What have you heard?” He asks, cold with hidden fury.

Lance tries to keep up his casual, non-threatening look, his back resting against the chair and legs crossed in leisure. “Not much. Like I said, it is a small rumor they heard. They don’t come from around here, but Pidge has a tendency to find out information from wherever, whenever. Since this concerns me, she felt the need to tell me. Like I said, I’m not going off of much, but judging from your expression, it’s not some silly rumor.”

“And what, pray tell, would you like me to tell you?”

He doesn’t hesitate.“The truth. Was there really a man by the name of Keith who died there?”

The landlord purse his lips. He takes a beat to breathe in, his gaze veering towards the nearest window. As if he were looking out for something. Or someone. Could he sense or see Keith? Is that why a fog descended his eyes? There is something he knows. Something he must tell Lance, and it all lies in his question.

“A man named Keith?” He starts, not taking his eyes off the window. “No, not that comes to my knowledge. Not from three years ago. I’ve been the landlord for a long time, and while I have seen many people go in and out of the apartment you live in, I cannot recall anyone dying there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“And you usually keep past clients on file, right?”

“Yes, it’s mandatory.”

Only ten minutes in and they already hit a wall. Son of a bitch.

“No one named Keith? Like, at all?” Lance pushes.  “Maybe you’re not thinking hard enough--”

“As I said,” He interrupts. “No one has died there. And certainly no one by the name of Keith. If so, I would remember it.”

“He is lying.” Keith snaps, approaching the landlord, though he cannot be seen. “If I never lived there, then why the hell am I stuck? Why did I wake up in that apartment? He is hiding something, Lance.”

Possibly. Lance likes him, but there is a vibe he is giving off. A vibe of worry. A type of panic one sees when an animal is cornered and they have no choice but to take drastic measures. Spirits can become attached to people and other places. They can travel. But they are aware of their past destinations, and Keith has nothing to gain by lying about his origins. His memory is wiped, but his logic is sound.

Lance needs to keep pushing. Keep pressing those buttons. There is a way to at the very least figure out Keith’s last name, and this man is the key. 

“Do you have files on your past clients?” Lance asks. “If so, maybe you can look and double check if--”

“There was no Keith!” Lance stops, his words dissipating from his tongue and Keith’s jaw clenching as the weight of the landlord’s sudden outburst hits them. The ice in his gaze has been consumed by fire. His kindness gone, his soft spoken, human aura sucked away by a darker force.

“What don’t you understand when I tell you there was no Keith? That apartment has been vacated for three years and poses nothing but a slight sign of needing renovations. I am the one who sees to renting out the rooms and I will give you the same fucking answer: there  was no Keith. You can tell your friend to mind her own business, or else I will not hesitate to give you a thirty day notice to clean all your stuff out.”

Jesus, why the sudden threat? Lance did not so much as touch the idea of angering the landlord, yet here he is, facing potential homelessness. It was like he is talking to a completely different person. What happened to the guy who showed him the place and offered him dinner from his wife as a welcome present? The guy who laughed at Lance’s jokes and offered a hand to help in case Lance’s job hunting does not go smoothly. 

“Woah, woah, woah man, I don’t know why you are so angry, I’m just asking if--”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out of my office.” He seethes. “We are done for the day.”

“But I’m not done!”

“You may not be, but I am.” He yanked the door open, motioning with a finger towards the outside. “Out of my office. Now.”

Lance doesn’t move,dumbfounded. Keith is beside him, quiet as his hands ball up. Lance is losing control fast. He doesn’t know what to do. To think. Keith is depending on him and here he is, hitting a roadblock so early. With someone Lance thought he could trust. He doesn’t need the file. He needs a name. That is all. He doesn’t know what he said to trigger the reaction, but he needs to bypass it. Calm him down. See if he can talk to him like a normal human while also not risk his living standards. It took him a long time to find a nice place at an affordable price point. He can’t lose his new home. Make the walk of shame back to his mother’s. It would not only hurt his ego, but hurt any chances he had with helping Keith. 

Or maybe Keith is wrong...

“Lance,” He says, as if reading his mind. He is still looking at the landlord, but something like realization enters his gaze. “I know I’ve been in this office. I know who he is. I cannot explain it, not now. But I’ve seen him before. I know I’m not wrong when I say I’ve lived here when I was alive. There is no way I’d stay in the same place if I knew an inkling of my life.”

He has a point. What would he gain by lying?

Lance slowly rises from his chair. “Okay, I’ll get out of your hair. I didn’t mean any harm, sir.”

Keith lets out a noise of protest, but Lance ignores him.

“That’s what I thought.” The landlord says. “Go home, I’m fifteen minutes late for the dinner with my wife. This happens again, I won’t be so nice.”

“I understand.”

When the landlord is out of sight and Lance has walk as far as the poor area near the office, Keith speaks up. “Great. Now what do we do, Sherlock? Our one lead is let go and we have nothing to work with.”

“I know.” Lance says, turning to face him, his expression undisturbed. “There was nothing to be done. Even if he is hiding something, he wasn’t about to let us in. Regardless of the good cop bad cop strategy.”

“What other strategy is there? Sneaking into his office and stealing the records?”

Lance smiles. Keith stares at him, not understanding the reason behind Lance’s demeanor until the lightbulb above his head switches on. 

“You can’t be serious.”

“What, like no one has done it before?”

“It’s illegal.”

“It’s plan B.”

“We could get caught. What if he comes back? Or another renter passes by and they see us rummaging through his files knowing damn well we aren’t his assistants?”

“Oh come on Keith,” Lance chides, smirking at Keith’s frazzled state. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet on me. Not when we are close to figuring out who you are.”

“I’m not getting cold feet.”

“Mmm, I think you are. The answers you seek are behind a wooden door and here you are worried about the law. You must have been a goody-toe-shoes when you were alive.”

Keith scoffs. “I don’t have a problem with breaking the law. I have a problem with you getting caught and kicked out. Or sent to jail. Then we would be in some deep shit.”

“Awww,” Lance coos, his hands above his heart. “You actually care about what happens to me. How sweet.”

“I care about moving on.” Keith deadpans. “The sooner I’m gone, the sooner I won’t have to hear you sing in the shower.”

Lance gasps, the small affection budding in his chest for the ghost withering away as soon as it appeared. Lance thought he could grow to care a teensy bit with his ghost roommate, but not when he indirectly insults his singing. 

“I have you know I am a BEAUTIFUL singer.”

“Not when it’s one a.m.”

“Why you--” Lance goes to tackling Keith, his body going right through him and his cheeks scratch the rough texture of thorns and wood in a rose bush. Keith is no doubt laughing at him, chuckles shaking his form as Lance struggles to stand back up. 

“I’m starting to believe you need an exorcism because you’re a demon.” Lance grumbles, wiping off the dirt from his skin and clothes. “To think I was beginning to like you.”

“What?” Keith asks, not hearing Lance over his laughter.

“Nothing,” Lance waves a hand at him. “You keep watch of the front for the landlord and any passerbys. I’m going to jimmy the window and sneak into his records.”

 

\-----

 

Turns out Lance did not need to break the lock, since the landlord neglected to lock the window in the first place. All he needed to do was pop the screen off and boom--he was in the office.

He surveys the area, noting there being three metal cabinets to the left of the desk. They take up quite a bit of room, the office built for one, maybe two people. If another desk were added, Lance wouldn’t be able to move around as much. 

He glances up at the ceiling, double checking there aren’t any cameras. Thankfully, there aren’t. It is a safety hazard to not have any when there are important documents in the confined space, but there isn’t necessarily any cash left at the end of the day. 

“Keith, you there?” Lance calls.

“Yeah,” He answers. “You’re good for now.”

Operation Ghost Hunt is now in gear.

Lance makes his way to the cabinets and bend down, concealing his body and head with the use of the desk. If anyone were to pass by, they will see a dark empty room so long as Lance kept himself hidden. If lady luck is on his side, Keith’s last name will not be in the top drawers. He crosses his fingers, praying it isn’t “Benson” or “Anderson” or some kind of common name that would have you called on first in school’s role call.

Wait, didn’t Keith mention a “K” kept popping up when he thought of it? He could have been mixing up his first name for his last, but then again, he does not seem like someone to get them confused. With him concentrating for three years, it wouldn’t make sense for them to be lost in translation.

Lance searches for the “JKL” section, his eyes landing on the second to last drawer on the second cabinet. It is scrawl on white paper with sharpie, Lance jumping on the opportunity and pulls the mental drawer. It moves an inch, but stops after that. Lance, confused, pulls again and again, the cabinet shuddering with clanks and clunks.

“What the fuck?” He pulls a fourth time, bracing his feet against the cabinet and use all of his strength to bust it open.

He isn’t getting anywhere. Not without a stupid key.

A key the landlord probably took with him. Lance looks around the desk and chairs, seeing if he stashed the keys somewhere in the office. But like any sane person, they are most likely hanging off the same keyring with his car keys, keychains, and office keys. He would pick the lock if he had any idea how to do that properly, but Pidge is his best bet. And she is a couple hours away. Lance and Keith do not have hours--they may not even have thirty minutes. He isn’t keeping track, he just knows he needs to hurry.

He hums in thought, eyes rapidly scanning the office for anything to pry the cabinets open. A letter opener, a pin, a freaking crow bar. There has to be something to force the lock open without a key.

As his gaze lands on the door Keith is guarding, an idea pops in his head.

Ghosts are capable of opening anything to their heart’s content, whether it is locked or not. It all depends on how determined they are to open the object of their attention.

If Keith really wants to know his name and get this investigation rolling, he no doubt will have the power to break the lock.

“Hey, Keith. Keith!” Lance whispers near the door, on his hands and knees from crawling over.

“What?” Keith responds. “If you’re too loud you’ll draw attention. A couple is about to pass.”

“Cool, I’ll hide. But I need you back here.”

“I thought you needed me to watch for the landlord/”

“I do, but I don’t have a key, and there is nothing I can use to pick the lock. I need you to use your ghost magic to open it.”

Lance doesn’t hear anything for a good minute, believing Keith has left him to fend for himself due to Lance’s incompetence. Lance is wondering if asking to break into confidential information is the last straw for the wandering spirit and is home free to a vacated apartment, but soon enough Keith’s sigh makes way to Lance’s ear. He pops his head through the door, his eyes narrow. 

Lance does not back down from the stare, activating his tear ducts and widening his eyes for his signature puppy dog look known to make even his own tough, almost impenetrable mother crack at the sight.

“Fiiiiiiine.” He groans. Lance grins, proud he hasn’t lost his touch.

Lance watches as  Keith approaches the cabinets. He places a hand above the desired lock, closing his eyes as a small gold light radiates from his palm. It shines off his skin, beautiful stardust coating his hand and burnt crimson embers intermingling with what Lance can describe as pure sunshine; a sunset flowing from his wrists all the way to the tips of his fingernails. It is so different from the rest of Keith. Abnormal, because Keith doesn’t give off an aura similar to Hunk’s. Nor has Lance seen a spirit use their energy in such a unique way, for they use anger and despair to move objects or crack windows. Here Keith is, perfectly content based on the smooth planes of his cheeks and brow, undisturbed by the distant laughter of a couple nearby and a dog barking from next door. 

It is as if Keith is alive again. His form became more opaque. Sold. Bordering on complete human, his soul never being extinguished even in death.

Lance cannot take his eyes off him. He is in a trance, in awe of the specimen before him. He has a sense to go up to Keith and try touching him. To see if he really is dead. He does not think his hand will go through him in the state Keith is in.

But in the moment Lance thinks that, Keith opens his eyes, the light draining from his palm. The faucet of life spring from his very existence is shut off, and he is back to being transparent. To being the tragic reality he is.

“There, you should be set,” He says. “I used the majority of my energy for the day to force the locks. Put everything back where it was to avoid suspicion. Can’t do much if nothing is taken.”

“Right...” Lance says, recovering from his trance. “Right. Don’t take anything. Got it. Great.”

“Are...you okay?”

“Hm? Oh yeah! Yeah, I’m fine.” Lance says, talking with his hands and his voice higher pitched. “I was...distracted!”

“Distracted?” Keith isn’t convinced, seeing nothing of particular interest that could have vied for Lance’s attention. Lance can’t tell him he was enamored by his beauty, it would be awkward. And opening doors to god knows what if he spoke those words out loud. Best to play dumb and act as if a bird snatched him into a revery.

A big bird.

A shiny, living, magical bird.

Pidge is right. He is a shit liar.

Keith does not dwell on it too much, the ghost shrugging and floating past the door again, leaving Lance with the push to officially start his search. 

Lance smacks his cheeks and shakes his head, casting away his previous thoughts. Now he is to get his head in the game. He has a mission, and it is finding out Keith’s name so they can find articles about a potential incident. His death could have been caused by anything. As long as it is out of the ordinary, there should be clues pointing to his memories and his demise. The good thing about today’s day and age is no one is ever truly erased. Not with social media, news sites, and blogs. 

He can do this. They can do this.

Except, after thirty minutes of searching, Lance is struck with confusion.

With concern. With bone chilling horror.

Various manila envelopes are sprawled out before him, all of the last names beginning with the letter “K”around him.

And none of them--absolutely none of them--has “Keith” as the first name.

 

\--------------

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Shania what the fuck with the cliffhanger?!"
> 
> I GOTTA KEEP YALL INVESTED.  
> also it's pretty long already. Chapter 3 should be up soon since I have more motivation!
> 
> Please leave a comment/kudos/bookmark it, I would love to hear from you guys, especially since the fandom isn't active as much anymore (I don't know if that is a good thing or bad thing)
> 
> Stay tuned, lovely readers!

**Author's Note:**

> And so, the two boys have met and have a goal in mind.  
> Think Lance can get the info?  
> Who knows :3
> 
> Please leave a kudos/comment, and bookmark it for the future! I love comments and cannot wait to hear from you as this story progresses!


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